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The NYPD Goes After Another Cop Who Secretly Recorded His Boss

“In the years since New York Police Department Officer Adrian Schoolcraft emerged with secretly recorded evidence of misconduct in a Brooklyn precinct, other cops have been inspired to follow in his footsteps, capturing their commanders pressuring them to hit illegal quotas. The NYPD has long denied that it’s compelled officers to reach certain figures for arrests, stop-and-frisks, and summonses. But the recordings proved that officers faced the threat of bad assignments, transfers, or other punishment if they didn’t make their numbers.” Continue reading →

Action Alert TODAY! Medicaid Expansion Vote!

“How willing they (the states) have been since the New Deal to take the Federal government’s money.. And it seems to me that they (the states) have compromised their status as independent sovereigns because they are so dependent on what the Federal Government has done, they should not be surprised that the Federal Government, having …

Mentally disabled woman calls 911 while being beaten during own arrest

“Federal Way Police are reviewing their use of force during a recent arrest in which a woman diagnosed with cognitive and hearing disabilities was punched several times, while being restrained. Police, in turn, are recommending the woman be charged with felony assault to an officer. Megan Graham told her story to KIRO 7, her face still black and blue and swollen from the beating. ‘I had a concussion. I still have a hard time understanding how things got so out of control, so fast,’ Graham said. ‘It was a total lack of communication.’ Graham says because the officer was speaking to her from his running car, she never heard his order to get back into her car.” Continue reading →

Schwagstock founder Jimmy Tebeau enters federal prison; should other music-festival organizers worry?

“At first prosecutors weren’t sure what charges to press against Tebeau. They used asset-forfeiture proceedings to take his land and freeze his bank accounts. Finally, six months after the raid on Tebeau’s property, they accused him of ‘maintaining a drug involved premises’ — a violation originally intended to punish landlords who lease houses to crack dealers. The law, broadly drafted to criminalize properties maintained ‘for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance,’ dates back to the mid-1980s, but it was amended in 2002 at the urging of then-U.S. Senator Joe Biden.” Continue reading →

Der Spiegel Laments The Rapid Spread of Printable Pistols

“A student from Texas has invented a plastic pistol that anyone can make with a 3-D printer. It is undetectable by metal detectors and capable of killing. And it is spreading unchecked across the continents. A few days after Cody Wilson’s invention had been created, the United States Department of Homeland Security issued a warning to the rest of the world. The officials, responsible for fending off terrorist attacks, wrote three pages about the dangers of a weapon against which they are powerless. They wrote that public safety is threatened. They also wrote that, unfortunately, it is impossible to prevent this weapon from being made.” Continue reading →

How Snowden Did an End Run Around the NSA and the Obama Administration

“Snowden went to the Washington Post first, but when the Post waffled, he dropped them and went to Glenn Greenwald, a pro-civil rights lawyer who lives in Brazil and writes for The Guardian, a British newspaper/website. Greenwald wrote up the story as Snowden gave it to him, thereby scooping the world. He gets 100% credit, as does The Guardian. The Washington Post gets also-ran status. These days, a leaker with a story can get his story out his way. There is always a journalist somewhere who will run it. If it’s in a major publication, which The Guardian is, the story will get coverage. A leaker no longer has to do it anyone else’s way. He can do it his way.” Continue reading →

Putin Lectures Obama on the Need for Greater Privacy

“So here is a former KGB official saying that America has gone too far in spying on its people. Worse, he’s correct. He said that Snowden’s revelations have revealed nothing new. He is correct. James Bamford has repeatedly revealed how far the NSA has gone. But the American public did not know. Snowden has gotten media attention for spilling beans that have long been out of the bag. Americans need a good scandal to catch their attention. Snowden is the source of the scandal. Bamford should have been, but he wasn’t. He was ignored. But the cloak-and-dagger story of Snowden in Hong Kong is irresistible. And now we get Vladimir Putin, defender of civil rights.” Continue reading →

Google, Yahoo, and Facebook Are Scrambling: “We Never Cooperated with the NSA!”

“How can they escape? Snowden’s story confirms James Banford’s story. Bamford revealed all this in 2008. No one cared. Now, without warning, this is a hot story all over the Web. How does a company plausibly deny this? They are all going with a version of this one: ‘We never inhaled.’ In March, 2012, Wired ran Bamford’s story on the NSA’s huge complex in Utah: ‘The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say).’ It got some coverage, but there was no follow-through. Congress does not care. Congress funded it.” Continue reading →